Rangel, at Debate, Wields a Phone to Mock His Opponents

By KATE TAYLOR

May 14, 2014

Representative Charles B. Rangel deployed an unusual weapon against his two Democratic primary opponents in a debate on Wednesday night: his iPhone.

Moments into his opening statement, Mr. Rangel, a 22-term congressman, pretended to get a call. He told the imaginary caller that he was in a debate and did not have much time to talk — then started into a monologue, delivered in a chatty tone, mocking each of his opponents in turn.

“No, he’s been there 18 years, but he didn’t say he passed any bills at all,” he said of State Senator Adriano D. Espaillat.

Of his other opponent, the Rev. Michael A. Walrond, a close associate of the Rev. Al Sharpton, Mr. Rangel noted that Mr. Sharpton had not endorsed him and said: “Listen, how can he register to vote in New York when he lives in Jersey?”

Finally, the moderator at St. Luke A.M.E. Church in Harlem told Mr. Rangel that his three minutes were up and he had to get off the phone.

It was a suitably bizarre opening moment for a raucous debate in which Mr. Rangel shouted himself hoarse in his effort to discredit his rivals.

Mr. Rangel is facing perhaps the toughest election of his career. New York’s 13th Congressional District, which he represents, is no longer a stronghold of African-American political power. It now stretches into the Bronx and the population is majority Latino, giving a potential boost to Mr. Espaillat, who is Dominican-American. The primary is on June 24.

Mr. Espaillat and Mr. Walrond, who looked on stonily during Mr. Rangel’s opening, wasted little time in hitting back.

Mr. Espaillat described himself as an “organizer at heart” and promised to “organize this community so we can go to Washington and show our strength.” He ridiculed Mr. Rangel as part of the “Washington elite.”

Mr. Walrond reeled off statistics about the district and said that while he lacked experience as a politician, he had fed the hungry as the minister of First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.

“You do not feed people with bills, you feed them with food,” he said.

Mr. Rangel dismissed his opponents as full of passionate talk but lacking the connections in Congress to achieve their goals.

“We’re not praying, we’re not just talking, we want to legislate,” he shouted, with his hand slicing through the air.

He repeatedly suggested that Mr. Espaillat had not passed any bills during his 18-year tenure in Albany. In fact, Mr. Espaillat has passed at least three bills that became law during three sessions in a Republican-controlled Senate.

Mr. Walrond’s spokesman, Peter Brown, said that Mr. Walrond had moved into the district from New Jersey in January and conceded that his voting record was spotty.

The audience frequently made itself heard, too. Although audience members had laughed throughout Mr. Rangel’s opening monologue, when he said in his closing statement that he wanted to have his “two-year contract extended,” some in the audience responded with shouts of “No!” and “For what?”

Correction: May 19, 2014

An article in some editions on Thursday about a Democratic primary debate involving Representative Charles B. Rangel, State Senator Adriano D. Espaillat and the Rev. Michael A. Walrond misidentified the type of cellphone Mr. Rangel held up at the start of the event. It was an iPhone, not a BlackBerry.